EU to limit use of health claims

23.03.2012 - Health claims are set to be drastically limited in the EU. On Wednesday 21 March the Environment Committee of the European Parliament confirmed a proposal of the European Commission to prohibit 1,600 health claims, most of them relating to probiotics.

Only 222 of the claims got the green light by the EU food watchdog EFSA, which carried out a scientific assessment of about 44,000 applications that were grouped to more general claims. British MEP Chris Davis and Finnish MEP Sirpa Pietkäinen had called on to reject the Commission's list, because they believed the list was flawed due to rigid assessment methods of the EFSA. Especially, probiotics developers and nutrition experts had criticised the EFSA for taking a pharma-like approach to assess efficacy of functional food without accepting studies with people who had i.e. diarrhea. However the members of the Parliament's Committee rejected the objection of their two colleagues. Consumer organisations such as BEUC said the vote will stop consumers from being misled by unsubstantiated or untruthful claims about foods.

29.07.2015 Newly founded Mereo BioPharma has acquired three mid-stage clinical assets from Novartis. In turn, the Swiss pharma concern will hold a stake in the UK company. Other investors are also on board.

24.07.2015 Biotech companies across Europe continue to raise cash on the public markets, generating €3bn in total financing proceedings in the first half of 2015. Compared to 2014, this is almost twice as much.

23.07.2015 US money keeps flowing into Europe's biotechs. As the race for the peanut allergy market heats up, NASDAQ listed French biotech DBV has announced the successful closing of US$281m (€256m) share offering for its allergy products.

16.07.2015 Sanofi has announced plans to restructure its business in five standalone global business units starting in January 2016. The goal is to promote growth and help the company launch a catalogue of new drugs over the next five years.

15.07.2015 GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has become the first drugmaker to join the Francis Crick Institute. It is a consortium made up of six scientific and academic institutes to conduct research and drug development in the UK. The new institute is set to become a world-leading centre of biomedical research and innovation.

10.07.2015 Karolinska Development has slashed the reported value of its portfolio by almost half by revising its valuation model for early stage companies and divesting its shares in pain med maker Pharmanest.

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